A Marsh Island has not fared
well among Jewett's works. Critics have given it almost no
attention at all. Except for Margaret Roman in Sarah Orne
Jewett: Reconstructing Gender, most of the few people who
have reported reading it have seen it as one of Jewett's lesser
works. Below are two typical evaluations of the novel.

As I have prepared this work for the
Sarah Orne Jewett Text Project, I have found much to like about
it. I have wondered whether previous readers have made too
much of the love story and too little of the story of the artist
finding himself, which seems obviously to be a version of
Jewett's own entering into her vocation from a privileged social
position.

Below are two well-expressed and typical
evaluations, presented in order to help point the question posed
by the reception of this novel so far. Has it deserved its
obscurity?

Acknowledgments

The following people did important work on preparing, editing
and annotating this text.
Linda Heller, Gabe Heller, Jay Searls, and
the members of the Fall 2000 Seminar on Jewett at Coe College:
Lonni Evans, Laura Heugel, Liane Kido, Thomas Metzler,
Claire Smith, Lisa Thorpe.

The last chapters of"A Marsh Island" are
printed in the June Atlantic. It has been a pleasant and
readable story, but I fancy that critics will be disappointed in
it, after the expectations raised by "A Country Doctor." That
book showed so marked a superiority over " Deephaven", and Miss
Jewett's short stories, that we surely had a right to look for
something unusually good in " A Marsh Island." In style, the new
book shows some gain -- an added ease in description, a more
skilful treatment of dialect, and an independence in the choice
of details which brings out more clearly than ever Miss Jewell's
strong individuality. But this gain is growth rather than
artistic development, and it is not accompanied by any
improvement in the matter of the story.
Miss Jewett always writes with a purpose. In
"A Country Doctor", she set herself the task of answering Miss
Phelps and Mr. Howells, the authors of "Dr. Zay " and "Dr.
Breen's Practice", by showing another and, as she believed, a
fairer view of the question at issue, -- whether or not women
could make successful doctors. Mr Howells, who always chooses to
picture weakness rather than strength, and who has never yet
given an encouraging answer to any social problem, selected for
his typical female physician" (no wonder that they do not
succeed while we call them that) a dependent, irresolute woman,
who began the practice of her profession with no appreciation of
the difficulties before her, and yielded to the very first
obstacle in her path. Mr. Howells was undoubtedly fair, having
given Dr. Breen such a character, in making her fail as a
physician. The unfairness, if there was any, lay in presenting
her as a type. Miss Phelps gave her heroine a stronger
character, but relented, as she always does when the question of
love conies in, and let Dr. Zay marry, and give up her
profession. Then Miss Jewett brought her " Country Doctor" on
the scene, and showed another side of the question. She,
undoubtedly had the truest idea of the matter. The only
women, -- or men, -- who ought to become doctors are
those who enter their profession, not from a, mistaken estimate
of their capacity, not because they must do something to support
themselves, not even from a, sincere desire to be of use in the
world, but because they were born with a special fitness and an
irresistible love for it.
Mr. Howells's and Miss Phelps's stories
were interesting and fair views of the question in its
application to certain types, but they gave the impression that
Dr. Breen and Dr. Zay failed because they were women, while the
fact is that the qualities in them which prevented their success
as physicians were not by any means exclusively feminine. As an
answer to the question, -- which had to do not with probability
but with possibility, -- Miss Jewell's book was fairer. The
literary merits of the book were great, also. The leading
characters were strongly drawn, the details of circumstance,
action, and scenery were well managed, and "A Country Doctor"
was a delightful book. Miss Jewett's first novel placed her high
in the ranks of contemporary novelists. "A Marsh Island "
sustains the reputation which she gained then, but does not
heighten it.
The plot of " A Marsh Island " is almost as
simple as that of"A Country Doctor." A young artist, wandering
into the country in search of "material" for his sketches, is
detained by accident in a farm-house on the Marsh Island. He
nearly falls in love with Doris Owen, the farmer's beautiful
daughter. She already has a lover in Dan Lester, a young man of
the neighborhood, whom she has always vaguely expected to marry;
but Dick Dale's culture and trained artistic mind, coming to her
like a revelation from another world, almost win away her
affection. In time, however, she returns to her old lover, and
is perfectly content to spend her life as a country housekeeper,
bringing around herself the new beauties which Dick Dale has
revealed to her, instead of leaving her home in search of them.
The artist leaves the farm-house, hardly knowing whether or not
he is a disappointed lover, and carrying with him a, new vigor
of purpose which bears fruit in finer work as an artist, and
stronger life as a man. This is the story. The whole interest
lies in the development of the few leading characters, and in
the exquisite descriptions of striking scenes, or narrations of
delightful bits of conversation in Marsh Island dialect. Miss
Jewett has the good sense to
confine herself to those branches of writing for which she has
natural talent; and so far as form goes the book is
exceptionally pleasant reading. But, after all, what merits has
the book aside from this charm of style? If an author writes
merely to please, we are content if he succeeds in pleasing us.
But, when we detect, as any critic must in Miss Jewett's books,
an intention to do something more than that, we have a right to
submit our author to a severer criticism; to ask what is the
object of the book, and whether it is successful. I confess to
finding some difficulty in defining the exact purpose of "A
Marsh Island." Perhaps Miss Jewett meant, more than any thing
else, to show that a woman of high ideals, of natural
refinement, and of mental strength can be perfectly happy as the
wife of a country farmer, who is her inferior in every one of
these particulars. I hope I am not unfair in assigning this as
the main purpose of " A Marsh Island", for in that case my whole
estimate of the book is unfair. Granted that this was Miss
Jewett's chief thought, the book fails to prove it true. If Dan
Lester had been a trifle less boorish, a bit nearer Doris's
level; if he had had the natural qualities which make refinement
possible, we could imagine Doris loving him and being happy as
his wife. But Lester has almost nothing to recommend him; he
loses his temper like an irascible small boy; he is childish in
his treatment of his rival, and selfish in his love for Doris.
The contrast with Dick Dale shows him in a most unfavorable
light. We find much to praise in the young artist, and almost
nothing to blame, except his want of energy; and he is cured
even of that by his contact with Doris Owen. They certainly come
very near falling in love with each other, and we are hardly
prepared to find it so Platonic a friendship as it appears in
the last pages of the story. When he comes back from the Island,
Dick Dale tells his friend, Bradish, that he wishes he had
fallen in love with the farmer's daughter; and I think most
readers will wish that he had not only fallen in love with her
but won her. There was something too fine in Doris Owen for her
to give herself up to the kind of life which her mother had
lived. No matter with how much love and hope she might enter
upon it, her future as Dan Lester's wife could hardly be as
happy as Miss Jewett promises. The deeper and richer side of her
nature, which had found sympathy in Dick Dale, was perfectly
incomprehensible to Dan Lester. It was not Lester's want of
education which made him incomparably his wife's inferior; if it
had been, there would be some hope that she might in time have
raised him to her level. It was rather an absolute lack of all
those finer inborn qualities which rendered Doris admirable, and
which made even the uncultured old farmer, her father, worthy of
both love and respect. Whether or not Miss Jewett wrote with the
purpose which I attribute to her, she is mistaken in her theory;
the conclusion can not logically come from the premises.
However, let me not be too severe on "A Marsh Island." The book
has some strong characters and several fine passages. Martha
Owen and Temperance Kipp are well-drawn, and the old farmer,
Doris's father, is excellent. The description of the ride to
Westmarket, in one of the last chapters, shows as fine work as
Miss Jewett has ever done. And if her views of life are not
always practical, her theories are interesting ; and among the
gloomy pictures of life and characters which many novelists
represent, Miss Jewett's idealism is sometimes really
refreshing.

Readers who were delighted with "A
Country Doctor," by Miss Jewett will be glad to find this newest
story by the same author, in such handsome dress as the
Riverside Press has given it.

from "Recent Fiction," The
Independent 37 (Sept. 17, 1885), p. 12.

Miss Jewett's A Marsh Island
is a stronger and more finished story than "A Country Doctor."
Perhaps the chief charm of it is its serene atmosphere, the
delightful descriptions of foregrounds and backgrounds, of cloud
and water and meadowland, in which the pleasant little pastoral
drama is played. This is quiet enough, we admit; but hardly less
interesting (unless on has come direct from the gas and glitter
of Ouida, for example) because the reader will take naps between
chapters. We quote an illustration of Miss Jewett's happy style
of dealing with a bit of description. It merely describes what a
young man lying in his bed, wakeful, gathered,
half-unconsciously, as impressions of the night; but it might be
far more commonplace in other hands.

"Later that evening, Dick Dale lay in
bed, listening again to the crickets, which kept up a ceaseless
chirping about the house, and to the sober exclamations of the
lonely sea-bird, in the lowland not far away. The window was
wide open, within reach of his hand, and once or twice he raised
himself on his elbow to look [up] at the stars, which were
gleaming and twinkling in a white host, whose armies seemed to
cover the sky. The willows reached out their huge branches, and
made a small cloud of dense darkness, and the damp sea air was
flavored with their fragrance and that of the newly-mown
marshes. There were no sounds except those made by the faintly
chirping creatures, which seemed to have been stationed by the
rural neighborhood as a kind of night watchman, to cry[,] 'All's
well,' and mark the time. The great loon was the minute hand,
while the crickets told the seconds with incessant diligence. As
for the hours, they seemed so much longer than usual, that,
whether a wind or a falling star announced their close, it would
be impossible to determine."

This is the poetry of quiet Nature,
felt and expressed with equal truth and simplicity.

The Literary World 16 (May
30, 1885) pp. 191-2.

A MARSH ISLAND

MISS JEWETT shows her wisdom as well
as her skill in confining herself, as a novelist, to a tract of
country with which she is perfectly familiar, and to a class of
people whom she knows by heart. This reliance upon personal
observation and experience gives to her books a landscape which
is realistic and a character which is literal and vivid. Miss
Jewett bids fair to be the prose romancist, as Whittier is the
poet, of Essex County, Massachusetts. The charm of this her
latest story is in the fidelity with which it paints the New
England prospect to the eye, at a point where the hills and the
sea blend in a borderland of marches and dunes, and in the
effectiveness with which she humanizes the scene with well-known
but fast disappearing types of character. Some novels offer
nothing to the eye and everything to the ear; others little to
the ear and everything to the eye; this book addresses both
senses, occupying the sight with long stretches of lowlands,
where creeks wind in and out flushed with the flowing tides, at
the same time that it pleases the hearing with the quaint and
homely talk of the kitchen and the mowing-field.

Nothing could be simpler than the
motive of this story; hardly anything could be finer than the
art with which it is handled. There is a farm-house on the Marsh
Island. There is a farmer's daughter, Doris. There is a lover,
Dan Lester, who has not yet spoken his mind. And while he halts
and hesitates, a roving artist appears at the door, a young man
from the city. A sprained ankle makes him a prisoner at the
farm. Dale, the artist, surrenders to the spell which Doris
casts over all around her; Lester, the former lover, is soured
with jealousy; and for a time it seems as if the Marsh Island
might witness a tragedy of hearts if not of lives. Like this is
the background against which the figures stand:

Westward from the farm,
beyond an expanse of almost level country, a low range of hills
made a near horizon. They were gray in the drought, and bare
like a piece of moorland, save where the fences barred them, or
a stunted tree stood up against the sky, leaning away from the
winter storms toward a more sheltered and fertile inland region.
The windward side of the Marsh Island itself was swept clean by
the sea winds; it was only on the southern and western slopes
that the farmer's crops, his fruit-trees, and his well-stocked
garden found encouragement to grow. Eastward, on the bleak
downs, a great flock of sheep nibbled and strayed about all day,
and blinked their eyes at the sun. . . . The salt-hay making was
over at last. The marshes were dotted as far as eye could see by
the round haystacks with their deftly pointed tops. These gave a
great brilliance of color to the landscape, being unfaded yet by
the rain and snow that would dull their yellow tints later in
the year. September weather came early, even before its
appointed season, and there was a constant suggestion of autumn
before the summer was fairly spent. The delicate fragrance of
the everlasting-flowers was plainly noticeable in the dry days
that followed each other steadily. The summer was ripe early
this year, and the fruits reddened, and the flowers all went to
seed, and the days grew shorter in kindly fashion, being so
pleasant that one could not resent the hurrying twilight, or now
and then the acknowledged loss of a few minutes of daylight.
From the top of the island hill a great fading countryside
[country-side] spread itself wide and fair, and seaward the
sails looked strangely white against the deepened blue of the
ocean.

Could the scene of this story be more
picturesque if it were laid in Holland?

While Doris waits for Lester and for
Dale, as if the first one who asked her might get her, the daily
work of the farm goes picturesquely on around her; the mother is
up at five to get the early breakfast at six for her father and
the farm hands who are off to the marshes before seven; the
peaches ripen and redden on the trees; the faithful Temperance
comes and goes on her errands; the heavily harnessed horses fare
afield; the white-winged ships float silently in the distance;
the gulls dip and soar; the doughnuts in the kitchen are rolled
and cut and fried; the tall clock ticks away; the tired and
hungry men come home to their suppers and their well-earned
repose; Sunday rests give opportunity for relished gossip; there
are visits to the near town; the artist visitor paints and the
jealous lover storms; the farm-hands have their quiet jokes and
the neighbors their conjectures and suspicions; until at last
the true lover's patience can bear no more, and sudden tidings
that he has shipped for the Banks bring Doris up by a round
turn, and the little drama, just escaping the line of tragedy,
plays itself out to a pleasant ending.

It is a sweet and fragrant tale;
honest and frank; full of a sylvan loveliness, a rustic
freshness, that present the best side of New England to the very
life; pure, refined, and wholesome, with the colors of an
afternoon in July by the sea, where the blue of the sea and the
whitish gray of the beaches and the green of the meadows and the
brown of the marsh grass make up an exquisite harmony, and the
plain old-fashioned dialect of Farmer Owen, his family, and his
men-folks recalls the almost patriarchal times which have faded
so rapidly into the past since the War.

Miss Jewett knows her forte, and
works accordingly. She takes a small canvas, selects a modest
theme, plies her brush with truthfulness and pains, and produces
as a result a picture which, though not a great one, is an
excellent one, and delights the spectator by its purity,
refinement, and fidelity to nature and life.

from "The Bookshelf," The Cottage
Hearth 11 (July 1885) 224.

A reviewer's task, if thoroughly done,
is not always a pleasant one. There are books where vast numbers
of pages have to drearily [be] traversed by the critic, who
wanders to and fro like a traveller on the desert, seeking for a
high spring of clear, living water. It is therefore, with a
sincere sense of personal gratitude that the writer has taken up
Miss Jewett's last novel, and found it as delightfully
refreshing as the shade of one of the old apple-trees she loves
to write about, on an August day. As a piece of literary work,
the "Marsh Island" is decidedly in advance of any previous book
the author has given us. The plot, though not unique, does not
lose its interest for a moment; nor can the conclusion of the
story be anticipated with any certainty until the last chapter
is reached. The description of the old farm in the midst of
dreary stretches of saltmarsh - one of the most impossible
landscapes to handle with vigor or pathos, one would suppose -
is charmingly natural and vivid. We can see the ponderous scow,
leaving the whitened patch of grass where it has lain all the
spring, and floating slowly down the reek; or hear the "rustle
of the unburdened bough" as, released from the hand of the
apple-gatherer, it springs back to its place. Doris is full of
shy, pretty ways, with little pathetic touches that are both
womanly and winning. What could be more touching than her
surprise at the sight of the tennis-ground, now deserted by the
city-folk; actual "land," just used on purpose for play! While
at the same time she approaches the closed house and, with a
strange longing, timidly peers into the dark interior through
the heart-shaped opening in the shutters. The whole book, one
said to the writer, is an exquisite water-color, with no heavy
daubs of fiery tint nor depths of black; just fair, sweet,
transparent colors, laid on with the daintiest of brushes. When
deeper reflections are ventured upon, they are always true, as
well as graceful. Though the artist left Doris behind, and felt
the loss in his life, "he was dimly conscious that for each
revelation of truth or beauty, Heaven demands tribute and better
service than before." That is a bit of real gospel; a little
sermon, as delicately preached as ever lady spoke. And of such
dainty and forceful utterance, the book is full.

There is a combination of the art of
the poet, the painter, and the story-teller in Sarah Orne
Jewett's A Marsh Island. It is at once an idyl, a
romance, and a cabinet of exquisite genre word-pictures.
A painter who is young, rich, gifted, and a society favorite,
but withal thoroughly clean-hearted and unspoiled, is carried by
his vagrant art to one of those rural oases so common on the
sea-coast counties of Massachusetts, where the rolling ground of
the mainland fades into the level marsh-land of the tide-waters.
Here, at intervals of luxurious idleness through a languorous
sunny day, he reproduces upon his canvas the scenery around him,
captivated with its rich glintings of color and its quaint and
quiet and secluded beauties, until evening overtakes him. The
day's work or play over, he lingers half dreamily and half
impatiently, waiting for the lad who had engaged to carry his
traps back to the distant town, but lingers fruitlessly, till at
length he sees the sun is sinking in the west, and he is left
seemingly the sole tenant of the country. As he has a "game"
foot, and it has become too late for him to find his way back to
his hostelry, he bestirs himself to find a shelter for the
night, and plods on jocundly, but a little wearily, until he
descries in the distance a farm-house nestled amongst tall
trees, in the neighborhood of a great red barn that bespeaks the
thrift of its owner, and encompassed by a farm that rises from
the surrounding marshes like a high and fruitful island.
Pleasantest of all to the wayfarer, at that moment, a straight
plume of smoke is going up from one of the chimneys of the
hospitable-looking dwelling, most supper-like in its
suggestions, and he makes for it as a haven where he shall find
rest and the creature comforts his inner man is now loudly
calling for. Nor were his hopes and expectations disappointed.
He is cordially received and hospitably entertained. The house
and its belongings gratify his æsthetic taste, while its owners
minister to his necessities. It is a happy, a wholesome, and a
plentiful home, equally removed from fashion and from rudeness,
dignified in its simple freedom, in the frank independence of
its primitive manners, in the capable management of its
mistress, and in the self-respect, the quiet dignity, and the
fine urbanity of its master, and beautified by the presence of a
daughter whose loveliness attracted, and whose stately grace and
womanly purity held in check, the admiring stranger. He soon
becomes a favorite with the old people, ingratiates himself in
their confidence, is permitted to stay on indefinitely, sets up
his studio in one of the commodious out-buildings, and begins a
rural idyl that is told with felicitous warmth and earnestness
in this charming story. How the gracious and beautiful farmer's
daughter, strong in her maiden innocence, and the handsome young
artist, sensitively alive to beauty, are brought closer together
by companionship and comradeship; how they mutually influence
and regard each other; and whether they indulge in young love's
dream, or whether it has already been indulged in to the
disappointment of the one or the other, we shall not now reveal.
Is it not all written in the delightful prose poem that awaits
and will richly reward our readers' perusal?

There are few things more
characteristic of New England scenery than the salt marshes of
the coast. It is to these that Miss Jewett takes us in her new
novel, which has just been rescued from the dismembering grasp
of the "Atlantic Monthly," as the "marsh island" which she
describes has itself been rescued from the Atlantic Ocean. It is
unnecessary to say that "A Marsh Island" is a simple and
exquisite story of, for the most part, the life of country
people, and that it is, in a high sense, an artistic production.
Miss Jewett has little invention, but she has a rare delicacy of
touch, and the American fiction of to-day shows no more
beautiful sign than that which is given by her stories and
sketches.

Miss Murfree has given us, in "Down
the Ravine," a story which is chiefly intended for juvenile
readers, but "children of a larger growth" will probably find it
no less interesting for its style and dialect, if not for the
narrative itself. It is the story of a Tennessee country boy,
whose chief desire is to become the owner of a mule. After
various reverses, his object is attained, and the story ends
happily for all concerned, excepting the bad boy of the tale,
who, in his eagerness to outwit others, finds himself completely
outwitted. There is a good deal of clever study, both of
character and of scenery, in this little volume, and Tennessee
is so little known to literature that such glimpses of its life
as Miss Murfree gives us are very welcome.

Atlantic Monthly 56
(October 1885), 560-1. by Horace Scudder

In Miss Jewett we have a writer who
might, if personal comparisons were not idle as well as odious,
be regarded in the light of Miss Howard's career. It were
scarcely more than a accidental ground of comparison, however,
which should be taken, were we to note their
contemporaneousness, their agreement in nativity, and their
common literary pursuit. We prefer to consider Miss Jewett
without references to others, and even without much reference to
her own previous work. Such a book as A March Island1
may very properly ask to be looked at in a gallery by itself.
Its charm is so pervasive, and so independent of the strict
argument of the story, that those who enjoy it most are not
especially impelled to discuss it. It does not invite criticism
and more than it deprecate close scrutiny. What was the charm
that Richard Dale found in the marsh island itself, where he was
so willing a prisoner? simply that which springs from a
landscape, broad, unaccented, lying under a summer day,
breathing the fragrance of grass and wild roses. The people
about him were farmer folk, scarcely racy even, the very heroine
herself moves through the scenes unadorned by any caprices or
fluttering ribbons of coquetry. The sketches which he brought
away were studies in this quiet nature; they were figurative of
A Marsh Island itself, which is an episode in water-color.

It seems to us that Miss Jewett owes
her success, which is indubitable, to her wise timidity. She
realizes the limitations of her power, and knows that what she
can do within the range of her graceful gift is worth far more
than any ambitious struggle outside of it would be. So long as
she can make us feel the cool breeze blowing over the marshes,
and suggest those long, even lines of landscape, and bring up to
our imagination the swing of the scythe, the passage of the hay
boat, the homely work of the kitchen, why should she weary us,
quieted by these scenes, with the turbid life which another,
more passionate novelist might with equal truth discover in the
same range of human activity and suffering? We are grateful to
her for the shade of such a book as this, and accept it as one
of the gifts which Nature herself brings to the tired dweller in
cities. We are not uninterested in the quavers of Mr. Dale's
vacillating mind, and we recognize the lover in Dan Lester, but
after all it is not these figures by themselves upon which our
attention is fixed; they but form a part of that succession of
interiors and out-door scenes with pass before the eye in the
pages in this book. Flemish pictures we were about to call them,
but the refinement which belongs to Miss Jewett's work forbids
such a characterization. We return to our own figure: they are
water-color sketches, resting for their value not upon dramatic
qualities or strong color, but upon their translucency, their
pure tone, their singleness of effect.

from Literary World 16 (May 30,
1885), 191-2.

As partially reprinted in Sarah
Orne Jewett: A Reference Guide

Jewett is wise in restricting herself
to the characters and settings she knows best. In A Marsh
Island "nothing could be simpler than the motive of this
story; hardly anything could be finer than the art with which it
is handled. . . . It is a sweet and fragrant tale; honest and
frank; full of a sylvan loveliness, a rustic freshness, that
present the best side of New England. . . ." Jewett paints a
modest picture but an excellent one which delights through its
"purity, refinement, and fidelity to nature and life."

Overland Monthly 5 (June
1885) 662-3.

Last of all come in by far the best
two novels of the summer: Within the Capes and A
Marsh Island. Both of these books are of the sort that
makes it seem so easy a thing to tell a simple, straight-forward
story and make it life-like and interesting that it is
unaccountable people should strain and fail so. Within the
Capes is conventional enough in its outline: a young
sailor, returning to his native Quaker village and there falling
in love; more sea-voyaging, shipwreck, lone island, rescue,
murder trial, and halcyon ending. Yet these conventional
outlines are filled in with the freshest and most winning of
detail and manner; nothing is strained, nothing crude, not a
false note touched. The style is almost quaintly simple: the
writer has helped his own imagination in rendering it so by
making it the autobiographical narrative of Tom Granger, told in
his old age, in the third person, with occasional quaint lapses,
as though unconsciously, into the first, so as to reveal Captain
Granger himself as the narrator yet without having to explain
that he is. Thus the gentle simplicity of speech of a good old
Quaker seafarer is attained, the usual drawbacks of the
autobiographical form. Tom Granger is a very fine fellow, and
the reader becomes aware of it without getting any unpleasant
impression that Granger himself thinks so. The Quaker village is
charmingly lifelike, and its people are no lay figures, but
living and worthy men and women - except the rival lover, who is
rather conventional. The time is 1812 and a few years
thereafter, and the old-fashioned flavor of the story is
appropriate, not only to the supposed venerable years of the
narrator, but to the period. This is the sort of story that the
"summer novel" should be: it is light, and by no means a great
novel; but it is a very pretty, pleasant, and gentlemanly one,
and we hope to see others from the same hand.

In even a higher degree, Miss Jewett's
new story has the grace of restraint, perfect simplicity and
directness, and the best of breeding in matter and manner. But
this comment and most other such that could be made, are merely
repeating what every one knows already of Miss Jewett's
invariable traits as a writer. Her style may be called well-nigh
perfect. This particular story is perhaps less delightful than
"A Country Doctor," yet that is more because the subject is less
notably happy than anything else. There is not much story, but
one does not want much story, in Miss Jewett's books; they are
transcripts of bits of life, not regularly constructed novels
with plot and machinery. The very fields, and sea, and farming
folk are in them. They do not pretend to go as deeply into human
nature, nor to be as minutely or vividly true to it as some
novels; but in its own way the characterization is perfect. They
are like a painter's outdoor studies. Wonderfully uniform they
are, too: in this latest one, neither falling away from the mark
of previous achievement, nor improving upon it, is visible. In
work so perfect in its own way, perhaps nothing of the sort is
to be expected. The idly is Miss Jewett's line, and tragedies
and dramas and the like are not to be sought among her quiet and
fragrant fields.

From The Critic 4 (8 August 1885)
64.

Miss Jewett's A Marsh Island

MISS JEWETT'S new book is in
many ways very pleasant reading. It is a great advance upon A
Country Doctor, and exhibits at their best the fine
literary traits that have made for Miss Jewett the enviable
reputation of one who can interest the public in simple things.
Nothing could be better of the kind than the bits of landscape
scattered through the book. Inimitable is the description of the
marshes, 'looking as if the land had been raveled out into
the sea,' and of the tide, 'holding itself bravely for a time:
it had grasped the land nobly; all that great weight and power
were come in and had prevailed; it shone up at the sky, and
laughed in the sun's face; then changed its mind, and began to
creep away again; it would rise no more that morning, but at
night the world should wonder!' So keen and bright and true are
these pen-sketches, that if they had been left as landscape
painting they would have seemed not only exquisite but spirited.
The effort to mingle with them, however, something of a story of
life and human nature, has resulted in a drowsy effect upon the
reader, which reminds one of Lucretia Mott's saying on entering
a room where her husband and brother were together: 'Ah! I
thought thee must both be here; it was so quiet!' It is
impossible to feel excited, very hard to feel even decently
interested, as regards the characters of the story. The mise
en scène is perfect, but the people are dull. That is,
they are not even really dull; they simply do not exist for us.
The good housewife does not touch our hearts, even as a frier of
doughnuts; Doris is entirely inanimate; and the artist is as
quiet as if he knew professionally that he ought to sit still
while his portrait was being painted. But it is pleasanter to
praise, and for the scenery and settings of the incidents no one
could have anything but praise. It is, indeed, because they are
so fine that one looks for something more important to happen in
them than the eating of apples or the making of a pie.

She was not at all sure at first what the characters were going
to do, but after a while told Whittier with some surprise that
it promised to be "a 'blooming' love story." She soon realized
that she was uncomfortable with what she had gotten herself
into, "I know I could write a better story without a lover in
it!" she lamented to Annie, and like all her similar attempts,
this "love" story never warms beyond friendship. (164)

Such as it is, the plot turns on the
question of whether the daughter, Doris, will succumb to Dale's
big-city charms or prove true to Dan Lester, a local blacksmith
she has known since childhood who has never gotten around to
proposing marriage. The lack of ardor on everyone's part is, in
the end, ludicrous: poor Doris actually feels "dumb before her
inevitable fate" when she first thinks Dan is about to propose.
We are constantly aware of an unspoken third possibility for
Doris, that of remaining independent and free . . . . [Unlike
Nan Prince and Sylvia] Doris is an ordinary girl, strong and
intelligent but with no definite talent. She and her father are
good friends, and there is an implied, might-have-been scenario
of Doris remaining on the farm, helping both parents, and
eventually inheriting it herself. But Jewett, clearly writing
against the grain but determined to write a conventional romance
about a "normal" girl, ignores her heroine's half-articulated
longing for independence and her identification with the crows,
who "were masters of the air, and could fly, while men could
not." (165)

Jewett's fictional "Sussex" may in
fact be a town in which a girl like Doris could be happy, but we
are not given any description of the town itself, only of the
farm some miles away. Because we are given no idea of the ways
in which Doris's life with Dan will be interesting and
fulfilling, and because her sudden resolution to marry lacks
emotional plausibility, the novel fails even as a potboiler
romance. No writing of Jewett's is an utter failure, however,
and the descriptions of the marsh and farm life, and the
characterizations of the senior Owens and their helper, Tempy,
are up to her usual mark. (166)

Images the 1885 Edition of A Marsh
Island

Weber & Weber's description in A Bibliography of the
Published Writings of Sarah Orne Jewett
indicates that these images are from the first edition.